Chapter 13 — What If He’s Real?
1313 Words
(Real Life — Late Night Thoughts)
I didn’t mean to stay up that late.
It started with just one thought — a passing question that refused to leave me alone — and somehow hours slipped away like water through cupped hands.
By midnight, my dorm room was wrapped in quiet. The hum of the desk lamp filled the space between my breaths. Ava had gone home for the weekend, leaving her side of the room looking strangely abandoned — one half of everything neatly empty.
I should’ve been asleep. But sleep felt impossible.
My body was heavy, tired, but my mind… my mind was running.
The dream wouldn’t stop replaying. Every moment of it — the fog, the feel of his hand, the way he looked at me like I’d been missing for lifetimes. I kept seeing that faint, sorrowful smile, the way he’d pressed his forehead against mine right before I woke.
It hadn’t felt like imagination.
It had felt like memory.
I sat cross-legged on the bed, my laptop open, the glow of the screen washing the room in pale blue light. The cursor blinked on an empty search bar.
My heart thudded once.
Then I typed:
recurring dreams of the same person
The results flooded in instantly. Thousands of hits.
I scrolled.
Psychology forums.
Dream interpretation blogs.
Reddit threads buried with confessions that all sounded like mine.
One post said it was “the subconscious filling a void of loneliness.” Another claimed “dream lovers” were projections of unmet emotional needs. Someone else mentioned sleep paralysis entities, which made me slam the laptop shut for three whole seconds.
When I opened it again, I tried a different search:
same person appearing in dreams spiritual meaning
That rabbit hole was worse.
Articles about twin flames, past-life soulmates, astral connections — all written in soft, glowing language that felt both comforting and terrifying. People swore they’d met their other half in a dream before finding them in real life. Others said those kinds of dreams meant you were being visited by a soul who’d known you across lifetimes.
I wanted to laugh. I really did.
But my hands were shaking.
Because the more I read, the harder it became to tell what scared me more — the idea that it meant nothing, or the idea that it meant everything.
I clicked through page after page, eyes blurring with exhaustion, until one line stopped me cold:
“If they feel more real than reality, they might be.”
My breath caught.
I stared at the sentence, reading it again and again until the words lost shape.
If they feel more real than reality…
That’s exactly how it felt.
I pressed my hand to my chest. My pulse was fast, uneven.
Adrian — or whatever his name truly was — didn’t feel like fiction. His presence had texture, gravity, warmth. He moved like a person, not an invention. Every time I touched him, it felt like the dream was the real world, and this — this room, this campus, this life — was the illusion.
I reached for my notebook, flipping through the pages. Dozens of entries, filled with half-remembered fragments:
“He said my name.”
“The waves were silver again.”
“I knew him before I knew anything else.”
Every word pulsed with the same quiet certainty.
My handwriting even changed — softer, looser, like someone else had been writing through me.
I closed the book slowly. The air felt heavier.
Maybe I was losing it.
Ava had joked about that before — said I was “dream drunk.” Maybe she was right. Maybe I was just lonely, inventing something to fill the quiet.
But lonely didn’t feel like this.
Lonely didn’t feel holy.
Around 2 a.m., I got up to open the window. The air outside was cool and sharp, brushing against my face like something alive. The campus below was sleeping — the pathways slick with moonlight, the trees swaying in soft rhythm.
Somewhere far off, a car door slammed. A dog barked. The world kept breathing.
But under it all, faint and steady, I heard something else.
Waves.
Not loud. Not obvious. Just the low, rhythmic hush of water folding over itself — as if the sea had followed me here, whispering at the edge of the night.
My eyes burned.
I rested my hands on the windowsill, staring out into the darkness. The moonlight caught on my bracelet — a thin silver chain, plain and forgettable. Except… I didn’t remember putting it on.
I frowned and lifted it closer. The clasp was delicate, almost fragile, but the metal was warm — like it had been worn for years.
Had I dreamt of this?
My pulse kicked. Images flashed — the dream beach, fog curling around my ankles, his hand brushing mine. A shimmer of light at my wrist.
No. It couldn’t be.
I backed away from the window, heart pounding. My mind scrambled for logic, for something rational — maybe I’d bought it last week, maybe Ava gave it to me and I forgot — but none of those excuses felt solid.
It was the same bracelet. I could feel it.
That realization cracked something open inside me.
The line between dream and reality wasn’t just blurring — it was bleeding.
By morning, I hadn’t slept.
The sunlight felt wrong, too bright, too sterile. I made coffee just to have something to hold. My reflection in the mirror looked unfamiliar — eyes too wide, lips pale.
Ava texted mid-morning:
“You alive?”
I stared at the message for a long minute before typing back:
“Barely. You?”
She sent a selfie from her parents’ kitchen, smiling, holding a piece of toast like a trophy.
“Weekend of carbs and no existential crises.”
I wanted to tell her everything — the bracelet, the research, the whisper of waves that still echoed in my ears. But what would I even say?
Hey, I think my dream lover might be crossing dimensions to find me.
Yeah. No.
So I just replied:
“Sounds nice.”
And closed the chat.
The day crawled by in fragments. Class. Coffee. Pretending to listen. Pretending to breathe normally.
Everywhere I looked, I kept waiting for something impossible — a shadow, a voice, a sign. My senses felt tuned too high, like I was walking through static.
In the middle of lunch, I glanced up and swore I saw someone at the far end of the dining hall — dark hair, tall, the way he turned his head—
But then he was gone.
Just another stranger walking away.
I told myself to stop. To let it go.
But that night, when I lay down again, the air in the room changed — softer, thicker. My pulse slowed.
I knew what was coming.
That strange, familiar pull.
I tried to fight it — to stay awake, to stay here — but my eyes grew heavy, my breath even. The sound of waves rose again, distant but certain.
And just before I slipped under, I thought I heard it — a voice, quiet as wind through water:
“You found me once. You will again.”
When I woke, the bracelet was gone.
I sat up, trembling, searching the sheets, the floor, the desk — nothing. It had vanished as quietly as it appeared.
That was when I finally wrote it down — all of it — on the next blank page of my diary. My hands shook so badly the words slanted across the lines.
What if he’s real?
What if the dreams aren’t dreams at all?
What if I’ve just been remembering?
I stared at the final sentence until it blurred.
Because for the first time since this began, I wasn’t just haunted.
I was certain.
- Writer
